Sussex R., Cubberley P. The Slavic Languages

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ˇita

read-MascSgPast

‘I told him to read’

Indirect questions are prefixed by a verb or expression of questioning, and the

question then follows in its original form and order, with only the person-

conversion from 1/2 to 3. Purely intonation questions do not occur as indirect

questions in indirect speech acts, and Yes/no questions require an explicit question

particle (172b). Information questions keep their original form (173b):

(172a) Rus –Ty

prigoto

vil obe

d? – sprosı

l koro

Iva

‘ ‘‘Have you prepared dinner?’’ the king asked Ivan’

(172b) Rus koro

sprosı

l, prigoto

vil li Iva

n obe

‘the king asked if/whether Ivan had prepared dinner’

(173a) Rus – Kto

prigoto

vil obe

d? – sprosı

l koro

‘ ‘‘Who (has) prepared dinner?’’ asked the king’

(173b) Rus koro

sprosı

l, kto

prigoto

vil obe

‘the king asked who had prepared dinner’

Indirect speech replaces quoted statements with reported statements.

(174a) Blg ka

k e sta

lo ‘how did it happen?’

(174b) Blg to

jsa˘obs

tı

,ka

k e sta

lo ‘he said how it (had) happened’

Indirect questions and indirect speech in Slavic share a feature of tense selection

which differs from English. In English an indirect expression requires the replace-

ment of the tenses, especially present by past, according to the familiar rules of the

‘‘sequence of tenses’’:

(175a) I am reading War and Peace

(175b) he said that he was reading War and Peace

In Slavic only the first of these conversions takes place – the conversion of person.

The tense remains that of the original utterance or question:

(176a) Rus ja

ita

ju «Vojnu

imı

r»

I-Nom read-1SgPres War[Fem]-AccSg and peace-AccSg

(176b) Rus o

n skaza

l, c

ˇto

n) c

ita

he-Nom say-MascSgPast that (he) read-3SgPres

«Vojnu

imı

r»

War[Fem]-AccSg and peace-AccSg

7.3 Specific construction types 399

7.3.5 Participial constructions

Participles occur in several types of constructions: in predicates, appositions, and

participial attributes:

(177a) Pol wiersze zostały wydrukowane

poem-Pl Aux-PlPast publish-PlPastPassPart

‘the poems were published’ [Pass]

(177b) Pol wiersze, wydrukowane w Ameryce

‘the poems published in America’

(177c) Pol wydrukowane wiersze imponowały wszystkim

‘the published poems impressed everyone’

Participles may also function as adjectives without their temporal meaning:

(178) ‘cultured/educated’:

PAST PASSIVE PARTICIPLE:

B/C/S

obrazovan Blg obrazo

van Rus obrazo

vannyj

Slk vzdelany

And they may function as nouns:

(179) ‘defendant’ (at law):

[PresPass] Rus obvinja

emyj

[PastPass] Cz, Slk ob ˇzalovany

Pol oskarzony

Ukr obvynuva

enyj Sorb wobskor ˇzeny

The syntax of Slavic participial constructions depends in the first place on the

availability of participial forms (5.5.5.10). Present active participles are not avail-

able in Macedonian, and though present in Ukrainian and Belarusian, they are not

in common usage. In Bulgarian (Scatton, 1993: 215) they are strictly literary. They

occur in apposition and as attributes, and may adjectivalize and nominalize:

(180) Rus trudja

iesja vse

x stra

work-NomPl-PresActPart all-GenPl country-GenPl

soedinja

jtes

unite-2PlImper

‘workers of all countries, unite!’

(181) ‘chairman, head’: Pol przewodnicza˛cy Rus zave

dujus

Past active participles occur in all eleven languages, though their use is not common

in Ukrainian and Belarusian, and in Ukrainian they are only formed from rela-

tively few verbs. In East Slavic they may function syntactically like present active

400 7. Sentence structure

participles, especially in Russian. Elsewhere their form is that of the l-participle,

which is the key component of compound tenses:

(182) Rus prie

xavs

ie ne zna

li o va

ej sva

‘the arrivals (lit. ‘the having arrived ones’) did not know

about your wedding’

Present passive participles are found only in Russian, where they are morphologi-

cally derived from transitive verbs, but syntactically function mainly as adjectives:

(183) Rus ne-osporı

-m-yj ‘incontrovertible, irrefutable’

ne-otvratı

-m-yj ‘inevitable’

dosjaga

e-m-yj ‘attainable’

Past passive participles are found in all eleven languages, and are syntactically the

most versatile participles. Typically Slavic is the use of impersonal constructions

(7.3.3) with participles, particularly the past participle passive:

(184) Pol ukradziono mi zegarek ‘my watch has been stolen’

And Slavic also has an ‘ ‘expanded participial attribute’’, as in German, where the

attributive past participle passive may include in pre-nominal sequences whole sec-

tions of structure which English would rephrase as an apposition or a relative clause:

(185) Rus

eti es

ne vse

mi avtorite

tami na

ego universite

prı

znannye predlo ˇze

nija

lit. ‘these not yet by all authorities of our university recognized

suggestions’

7.3.6 Gerundial constructions

Slavic gerunds, unlike English gerunds, can refer only to the subject of the main

clause (though Sorbian is a special case: 5.5.5.11). Compare

(186a) Rus vxodja

vdo

m, ja

uvı

del ego

enter-PresGer into house I-Nom see-MascSgPast he-Acc

‘Going into the house, I caught sight of him’

(186b) Rus ja

uvı

del ego

, kak o

n vxodı

lvdo

‘I caught sight of him (as he was) going into the house’

Except in short sentences, the Slavic gerund-clause usually precedes the main

clause, which helps to prevent another noun phrase from occurring between the

7.3 Specific construction types 401

gerund clause and the subject. Czech gerunds agree in gender and number with the

subject of the main clause:

(187a) Cz znajı

ce potr

eby rostliny v r

uˇzny

ch obdobı

ch jejı

ho ˇzivota,

uˇzeme r

dit jejı

ust

‘knowing [MascPl] the requirements of the plant at various

stages of its life, we can control its growth’

(187b) Cz ani nepromluviv odes

el ven

Neg talk-MascSgPastGer go_away-MascSgPast away

‘without a word (lit. ‘not having spoken’) he went away’

Gerunds are either imperfective or perfective, though Bulgarian and Macedonian

lack a perfective (or past) gerund (5.5.5.11). And in any case gerunds, particularly

the perfective, are rare in the spoken languages.

7.3.7 Ellipsis and deletion

The omission of subject pronouns is typical of certain Slavic sentences. Subject

pronouns normally cannot be omitted unless person/number is explicitly marked

on the verb. East Slavic has lost the auxiliary ‘be’ in what used to be the compound

tenses. This means that the past tense of all verbs will lack person/number marking

on the verb, and so the pronoun must remain, at least in the standard language. If

the person is clear from the preceding or extralinguistic context it may drop in

colloquial usage (188b):

(188a) ‘I was reading’: Pol czytał-em Rus ja

ita

l-ø

(188b) Rus –Po

njali? – (Da

,) Po

njal.

understand-PlPast (yes) understand-MascPast

‘(Do you[Sg] ) understand?’ ‘(Yes), I do/understand’

East Slavic also retains the pronouns in the inflected forms of the verb which do

mark person/number explicitly – that is, the present and future. The omission of the

pronoun is regarded as stylistically marked (e.g. letters) and/or colloquial, in spite

of the redundancy of the person/number information in both the pronoun and the

inflexion on the verb:

(189) Rus ja

du stara

sja ‘I shall try’ [Imprfv]

In West and South Slavic both the copula and the auxiliary are fully alive, and

mark person/number consistently in most relevant forms of the verb. The 1 and 2

Person pronouns are omitted as a matter of course – indeed, their inclusion is

stylistically marked and emphatic:

402 7. Sentence structure

(190a) Sorb smy (sc

e) be

ˇrny

zbe

ˇrali

‘we (you [Pl]) collected potatoes’

cf. (190b) Sorb my smy (wy sc

e) be

ˇrny

zbe

ˇrali

Third person pronouns, however, are not usually omitted:

(190c) Sorb wo

n je be

ˇrny

zbe

ˇra

ł ‘he collected potatoes’

And it is in the 3 Person singular that the auxiliary is omitted in languages like Czech,

Slovak and Polish, which throws the burden of distinctiveness back on the pronoun.

The ellipsis of the present tense of ‘be’ is not a matter of grammatical choice. In

East Slavic the forms of the present tense of ‘be’ have been lost, with the exception

of the 3 Person singular, and this form is used for all persons and numbers when the

verb is used at all: Rus est

, Ukr je, Bel e

. The verb ‘be’ is normally omitted in

copulative sentences and in statements of location and time:

(191a) Rus konce

rt – xoro

ij /v tea

tre /v 5 c

aso

‘the concert is good/is in the theatre/is at five o’clock’

The non-zero present tense of the East Slavic ‘be’ is used for ‘there is/are’:

(191b) Rus e

xar v s

kafu

‘there is some sugar in the cupboard’

in definitions in scientific, philosophical and technical language:

(191c) Rus pra

vda e

krasota

‘truth is beauty’

and in statements of possession, especially in response to a question about posses-

sion containing the word est

/je/e

(191d) Rus una

s e

ˇto

pı

‘we do have something to drink’

Polish may also omit the verb in several specific present tense contexts, when to

and/or a dash replace byc

‘be’, in some impersonal constructions, and with person-

suffixes attached to adjectives:

1. When to replaces the form of ‘be’; with to the case following the copula

is the nominative, unlike the instrumental which follows ‘be’:

(192a) Pol Maciek – to du

zy chłopak ‘Maciek is a big lad’

This use of to only occurs with a following noun predicate, and not

with adjectives, or with expressions of place or time.

7.3 Specific construction types 403

2. When a dash replaces the copula in the written language. This usage,

which is more regular in East Slavic, is used in definition-like state-

ments, normally joining a noun subject and a noun predicate:

(192b) Pol Kanbera – stolica Australii

‘Canberra (is the) capital of Australia’

3. In some impersonal constructions, particularly those containing a

‘‘category of state’’ word, the present tense of ‘be’ may be omitted:

(192c) Pol gora˛co mi ( jest)

hot-NeutSg I-Cl-DatSg be-3Sg

‘I feel hot’

4. The person/number marker derived from the verb ‘be’, and used as an

auxiliary, may be attached to the first accented word in the sentence as

a suffix – like the true enclitic it is. This usage is colloquial:

(192d) Pol pijan-i-s

my or jestes

my pijan-i

drunk-MascPl-1Pl be-1Pl drunk-MascPl

‘we are drunk’

7.4 Word order

In Slavic word order variations are more common, and show a greater range of

grammatical types and stylistic effects, than is found in English. Three princi-

pal grammatical factors influence variability in Slavic word order: the marking of

grammatical relations by means other than word order; constituent structure; and

conventional word order (7.4.1). Word-order effects are also closely linked to

Functional Sentence Perspective (7.5).

7.4.1 Marking grammatical functions and relations

Word order is potentially more variable if a word or construction marks its

grammatical role in the sentence by means of affixes (concord, agreement or

government: 6.2). Conversely, word order is more fixed when it is the word order

itself which marks grammatical relations. In (193a) v ponede

nik ‘on Monday’ can

either modify the noun poe

zdka ‘trip’, or can modify the whole sentence; the

reading of ‘a Monday trip’ is not available in (193b), where v ponede

nik is in

sentence-initial position, and can only act as a sentence-adverbial:

404 7. Sentence structure

(193a) Rus onı

predlo ˇzı

li poe

zdku v ponede

nik

‘they suggested a trip on Monday’

(ambiguous: either the suggestion occurred on Monday, as in

(193b), or the trip was destined for Monday)

(193b) Rus v ponede

nik onı

predlo ˇzı

li poe

zdku

‘on Monday they suggested a trip’

A second means of marking grammatical relations is the argument structure

of predicates in selecting the types and sub-types of their subjects, objects and

so on:

(194a) Cz Honza trpı

socialismus [SVO] ‘Honza tolerates socialism’

(194b) Cz socialismus trpı

Honza [OVS] ‘Honza tolerates socialism’

In (194a–b) the verb carries 3 Person singular agreement, which could poten-

tially allow either Honza or socialismus to be the subject, as in Socialism

tolerates no opposition. But the Czech verb trpe

t ‘to tolerate’ does not normally

accept an inanimate abstract subject like socialismus with an animate object

like Honza, and this fact determines the syntactic relations between the three

words in the sentence. Both (194a) and (194b) are therefore acceptable, with

Honza as the subject in both instances (for the difference in information

management, see 7.5).

7.4.2 Constituent structure

Clearly signalled grammatical relations, however, cannot explain why the consti-

tuents of the verb phrase should be more mobile than the constituents of the noun

phrase. Within the noun phrase most grammatical relations are clearly marked by

concord. A certain amount of order variation is possible, for example in the

internal ordering of modifiers:

(195) Sorb ‘‘these my two new suits’’

(a) t-ej dw-aj moj-ej

this-MascSg two-Masc my-NomDu

now-ej woblek-aj

new-MascImpersNomDu suit[Masc]-NomDu

(b) tej mojej dwaj nowej woblekaj

7.4 Word order 405

But noun phrases allow few external elements to intrude, and most of these are

short, like clitics (7.4.3), or verbs of ‘being’ and ‘having’ with no expressed subject,

as in this N + V+ Adj structure:

(196a) Pol buty ma ładn-e

shoes-Nom/AccPl have-3SgPres pretty-NonAnimNom/AccPl

‘he/she has pretty shoes’

or ‘be’ possessives with short subjects:

(196b) Rus kakı

eøuva

s name

renija?

what-NomPl (be) to you-GenPl intention-NomPl

‘what intentions do you have/what are your intentions?’

Such examples show that word order depends on the nature of the constituents of

the sentence as well as on the signalling of grammatical relations. But behind both

these principles of word order lies the factor of conventional order, which has a

historical basis.

7.4.3 Conventional word order

Many aspects of conventional word order have already been illustrated in this

chapter, reflecting the neutral order of elements in the sentence. There are three

areas of conventional order which show some grammatically controlled variation

within Slavic: subjects, verbs and objects; modifiers; and clitics.

7.4.3.1 Subjects, verbs and objects

Slavic, like English, has a dominant SVO (Subject–Verb–Object) order. The

importance of this neutral word order can be appreciated from the way in which

examples like (197a–b) are interpreted:

(197a) Rus ma

lju

bi-t do

mother-Nom/AccSg love-3SgPres daughter-Nom/AccSg

‘the mother loves the daughter’

(197b) Pol byt okres

la s

wiadomos

being-Nom/AccSg determine-3SgPres consciousness-

Nom/AccSg

‘being determines consciousness’

In the absence of other markers of syntactic relations, such sentences are

normally interpreted as SVO: the first noun phrase is taken as the subject,

406 7. Sentence structure

although the order OVS is also consistent with the inflexions and the argu-

ment structures of the verbs. It is just possible to force an OVS reading with

appropriate contexts and intonation, but this reading is stylistically marked

and artificial.

The position of the object in the sentence depends on whether the object is a noun

or a pronoun. A single object pronoun precedes the verb in almost 50 percent

of instances in Russian (Svedstedt, 1976), and this figure agrees with what is known

about object-placement in all three East Slavic languages. (198a–b) are equally

natural:

(198a) Rus mo

j zja

gnal ı

z domu

my son-in-law her eject from house

‘my son-in-law threw her out of the house’

(198b) Rus mo

j zja

gnal ee

z domu

(...) eject her (...)

‘my son-in-law threw her out of the house’

With two objects the pronominal object usually precedes the nominal object

irrespective of case, as in English:

(199a) Rus ja

l emu

knı

I give-MascSgPast he-DatSg book[Fem]-AccSg

‘I gave him a book’

(199b) Rus ja

lee

Iva

I give-MascSgPast it-FemAccSg Ivan-DatSg

‘I gave it [Fem] to Ivan’

A pronominal object may even precede the verb, especially if there are two pro-

nominal objects:

(199c) Rus ja

emu

l knı

gu/ee

I him-DatSg give-MascSgPast book-AccSg/it-FemSgAcc

‘I gave him the book/it’

Verbs in personal constructions, but lacking an expressed subject, preserve the

unmarked VO order:

(199d) Rus o

tdali ego

give-away-PlPast it-Masc/NeutAccSg

‘they gave it away’

7.4 Word order 407

In West and South Slavic, object pronouns are clitic and occur after verbal clitics in

the first unaccented syntactic position in the sentence (7.4.3.3):

(200) Cz vide

ˇl

jsem ho v Praze

saw-MascSgPast Aux-1Sg he-Cl-Acc in Prague

‘I saw him in Prague’

In Bulgarian and Macedonian object pronouns can also be proclitic, and are used

with object nouns. Having lost most of their case forms (5.4.2, 6.2.4), nouns in these

languages would appear to have less freedom to invert subject and object.

Macedonian, however, has overcome this difficulty by using proclitic personal

pronouns, which have maintained their case forms, to signal non-nominative

cases. The proclitic object pronoun can precede the first accented constituent of

the sentence. This construction is used even with SVO order:

(201a) Mac fatete ja mac

ˇkata

catch-2PlImper it-Procl-FemAcc cat-Fem-Def

‘catch the cat!’

(201b) Mac me najde brat mi

I-Procl-Acc find-3SgAor brother I-Encl-Dat

‘my brother found me’

In Macedonian this usage involves not only proclitic pronouns supporting nouns,

but also enclitic pronouns supporting non-clitic pronouns, especially when (as in

the accusative and dative) case-marking is better preserved than in the full-form

non-clitic pronouns:

(201c) Mac mene mi rec

I-Dat I-Encl-Dat say-3SgAor

‘he told me’

This extra-pronoun construction must be used in Bulgarian in OVS constructions

when the morphology does not otherwise mark the grammatical roles. In (202a) it

is necessary to mark the object ma

jkata; in (202b) the reduplicated pronoun is

required to mark the complement in sentence-initial position of a negative imper-

sonal construction. But the reduplicated pronoun is optional in constructions like

(202c), where the morphology does mark the grammatical roles adequately

(Scatton, 1984: 373):

(202a) Blg ma

jkata ja gle

da dete

mother-Def she-Encl-Acc look-after-3SgPres child-Def

‘the child looks after the mother’

408 7. Sentence structure